Daily Illuminator: Mini Car Wars Returns

Daily Illuminator: Mini Car Wars Returns

So, Steve Jackson Games made this announcement yesterday in regards to Car Wars.  As one of their stretch goal on the Ogre Designer’s Edition Kickstarter, they were going to go into playtest and start on another version of Car Wars.

Does the hint of “…while we work on the big stuff!” mean that it’s really going to happen?

This is what the stretch goal said if they made it to $7000:

$700,000 – GOAL ACHIEVED! – Drive Offensively! We will launch a Kickstarter project for Car Wars! We *think* this will turn out to be a refinement of Car Wars Compendium 2.5, but you’ll tell us. Our supporters at the [new] $23 level and higher will be invited to join an exclusive Car Wars forum, where we’ll build the new edition from the ground up – issues like “which classic cover do we use?,” “10 phase, 5 phase, or 3 phase movement?,” and “do we include boats?” Once the project launches, surveys will be open to the public, but only supporters of the current project will get in on the preliminary planning. And we’ll take everything we have learned from our Ogre Kickstarter project to make the Car Wars project even better. If we make this goal, the private Car Warsforum and surveys will launch before the end of 2012. The game will be published in late 2013.

I for one was a fan of Car Wars, and I’d love to see what the next incarnation is!

How about you?  What do you think about the up-coming Car Wars?  What did you think about the original?

Steve Jackson Games Looking for More Games to Publish

From the Daily Illuminator that is published daily at 9am:

Would You Like To Be Acquired?

To make a long story short: I’d like to plow some Munchkin money back into the game hobby. Here’s a very direct invitation.

If you’ve been publishing good games, and you know it, but you would like to cash out . . . or if you want to keep creating games but would rather be part of an operation with a 30-year track record and a good health plan . . . talk to me.

This is not “Hey, everybody, I’m looking for random submissions!” Really, it’s not. It’s for established publishers. If you’ve never sold to Alliance or ACD, or had a booth at the GAMA Trade Show, or had whole BGG threads arguing about whether you were secretly the Spawn of Satan, then this is probably not aimed at you.

I figure this announcement, posted this way, will get a bit of talk, which makes it a good way to reach out to the whole hobby. I just wish I’d done it on April 1 so I could have gotten some viral “Does he mean it?” repostings. Hindsight is 20-20.

Phil Reed will do the initial screening for me. Write to him at phil@sjgames.com. We will keep confidentiality. In fact, only four of us at SJ Games will even know who has responded until and unless we sign a non-disclosure agreement, and then we’ll work according to the agreement. If the deal doesn’t work out, it officially never happened. If it does work out, you could cash a check, or join the Illuminati, or both.

Let’s see what happens.

— Steve Jackson